Brushing The Sky
by Lt. Commander Richie
Summary: The Exorcists Tina Spark, Sol Galen and Gwen Frere. Killed while looking for General Cloud Nine. This is the story of Tina, because nobody else will tell it. From her life as a Finder, to the end of her life as an Exorcist. Completed. Award-winning.
1. Night 1: Wishing

**Brushing the Sky**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **I technically don't even own Tina Spark. Just the character design, not the character herself. So keep in mind, this isn't actually how Tina Spark became an Exorcist. Hell, she could be a parasite-type that breathes fire or spits acid for all we know, she's never actually SEEN in the series. But whatever. My story, my rules, my writing. Just not my characters.

**EDIT ON 9/7/2009: H-holy shit, guys. This won me Best Author at Kumoricon 2009's fanfiction contest. I feel more proud of it than I did before. **

_Chapter 1

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The room was terribly sterile. Bright lights shone above, and the floor was a faux veined marble made of plastic that was shined to the point of being able to nearly see yourself in it. The only spot of color was a little dot of blackness, wasting away in her bed. Next to her bed was a chair, empty and cold in all its stainless steel pieces.

A door opened. The little girl did nothing. Even if she wanted to, even if she had the willpower to do so, she couldn't have for the shackles on her arms. A girl in her late teens made her way into the room, the door creaking shut behind her. Her beige coat flapped around her in a level of noise that was nearly unbearable in the silence of the room as she jumped on one foot and then the other from linoleum tile to linoleum tile. A canvas bag was dropped on the floor by the girl and left, a book and pen spilling out onto the floor unchecked.

The Finder's name was Tina Spark, a girl just a hair shy of nineteen and a half with wide brown eyes and matching chin-length brown hair that flipped out at the ends. As she jumped from square to square with her arms held out to her sides, her wing-shaped metal earrings jingled softly. Carefully, quietly, the teen watched the little girl while she jumped and twirled around the room. It was hard to believe that a girl so small, so frail, was on suicide watch. Tina was the one that got to watch her for the rest of the day.

For the next hour and a half, Tina spun herself dizzy, told bad jokes and made terrible puns. She took her socks off and made them talk to each other, she used one of her boots as a hat and then tried to balance it on her head as she walked around the room. But that little girl just stared, her eyes blank and lifeless. It was like trying to make a coma patient smile. It wasn't right to see a little girl that couldn't smile. Tina stilled, her metal earrings jingling softly. She took the shoe from her head and put it back on her foot, then went and retrieved her bag from the floor.

The contents were simple, a couple snacks Jeryy had made her and a few books and other doodads to keep her occupied. After all, there wasn't much a girl could do when watching a little girl and making sure she didn't try to kill herself. The brunette sat down in the chair next to the little girl's bed and pulled out a violently orange skein of yarn and two knitting needles. She drew her knees to her chest and hunched her back, resting her chin on her knees and holding the needles and yarn in front of her.

"Hey, Lenalee." The little girl's eyes just barely moved, hardly focused but still looking. "You wanna learn how to knit?" Her dark hair flopping slightly into her face, the girl in the black dress turned her head just ever so slightly so as to watch. With deft fingers, Tina began her work slowly but surely. She did a step, then undid it and did it again several more times for the benefit of the girl in the bed. This repeated for a while, the violent orange skein of yarn shrinking slightly as the beginnings of a scarf formed between the needles. But the only thing that moved in the room were the needles and Tina's hands, neither girl even so much as shuffling. An hour went by, then two, and the scarf got longer. The skein of yarn that sat on the floor, unraveling every now and then, got smaller. It continued until the scarf was three and a half feet long and the skein was all gone. Tina tied a knot in the yarn with aching fingers and then dropped the scarf, putting the knitting needles in her mouth and flexing her stiff hands. Lenalee went back to staring at the ceiling.

The scarf was put away and the brunette pulled out the book she had brought with her. It was a small thick volume with a makeshift cover made from a few sheets of paper that covered a somewhat-racy illustration on the front. The little girl in the bed may have been nearly comatose, but nobody would forgive the Finder for exposing a tiny little girl to the horrors of her chosen reading material. Tina didn't move from her position of her knees brought to her chest and her chin on her knees as she read silently, flipping pages every now and then. She checked her watch after three chapters, then read for a good forty more minutes until Enrique began whispering sweet nothings into Cassandra's ear as he relieved her of her dress and the teen couldn't read any farther without blushing. She closed the book and dropped it back in her bag, then looked back at her watch. It was almost time for dinner. Just another hour and the brunette's shift of three in the afternoon until half-past eight would be over.

So Tina Spark sat, her knees drawn to her chest and her hands clasped together in front of them in a thoroughly bored fashion. She sat in silence, watching the wall and keeping a firm awareness of the little girl in the bed. She began to fidget after fifteen minutes, and drew a snack from her bag and chomped on it while pulling out a nearly-finished stuffed bear with a needle and thread hanging from the wide-open seam of his neck and back. Fluffy batting piled out of the bear like a Haggis after being cooked, cut and squeezed, and the Finder dutifully began to stitch it closed.

"So I heard that you can fly." The brunette finally spoke after a while, the stuffed animal's head slowly but surely becoming one with its torso. Lenalee said nothing, only blinked in a slow and agonizing fashion. Stitch, stitch, stitch. "I've always wanted to fly. I want to jump up and touch the stars. I want to go up and never come back down." Stitch, stitch, stitch, stab. Tina muffled a curse as she sucked on her finger, a tiny prick of blood staining the tip of her sewing needle. The stuffed bear's head was completely sewn on, each stitch careful and tight. The Finder started stitching the back seam closed, poking the fluffy white batting inside the form of the animal as she went. "It figures that someone who hates it would get the power to fly."

The minutes until her shift finished were winding down as Tina sat in silence, carefully sewing the back of the light brown bear shut. She tied a knot in the thread and gave it a couple yanks before biting it with her teeth and severing it, then fluffed the fur of the bear to hide the stitches. The needle was dropped into the canvas bag next to the chair, and the brunette pulled a carrot from the bag and munched quietly on it. She watched the hands of her watch as she munched slowly, counting down the minute and a half until she could leave. After all, there was only so much you could try to do to pique the interest of a girl that seemed beyond help.

The clock hit eight thirty, and Tina Spark stood with a crunch as her back snapped back into place. She groaned as she continued to elicit snaps and crunches from her bent spine, then her neck as she twisted her head, then her jaw as she opened and shut her mouth as far as it would go. She picked up her bag, the bear still in her hand, and headed for the door. She didn't skip across the linoleum as she walked, she didn't jump from square to square. There was no point, she had learned, to trying to get a girl that was dead inside to laugh. The Finder opened the door and walked out, only to smack into someone. He wore a white coat and a blue turtleneck, and his long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It was the new Supervisor, Komui Lee.

"I'm sorry Mr. Supervisor, didn't watch where I was going." The man offered her a kind smile, eyes just as kind behind his glasses.

"That's alright. This is where they're keeping-" he began, trailing off as he looked at the big wooden doors with iron bands around them. Solid wooden doors that didn't look like they would move if they weren't hinged. Doors designed to keep someone _in_.

"Lenalee? Yeah. I just got done with my suicide watch shift." The new Supervisor looked startled, as though nobody had bothered to tell him that the little girl tied to the bed in so many different ways was tied like that to prevent her from harming herself. "She can fly. I wish _I_ could." The Finder looked down at the bear in her hand, as though just realizing that she was still holding it. She held it out to the dark-haired man with a smile and a tilt of her head that made her wing-shaped earrings jingle. "Would you give this to her?"

"I will." Komui nodded, and accepted the bear. Tina turned down the hall and ran. If anyone asked, it was because she was hungry and hankering for pot roast and mashed potatoes with lots of gravy and chocolate milk.

But if Tina Spark asked herself, it was because she couldn't stand that room, or that little wasting black spot of a girl that didn't want the power she would give anything for.

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**When I first started this, it was going to be a story just about a Finder that wanted to fly. That Finder would be me. But then I decided that nobody ever pays attention to the dead people mentioned in passing, and I made her Tina Spark. **

**All-in-all, this was a series that I spent quite an amount of brainpower on. Each chapter, with only one exception, is a large amount of time apart from the next. The story will include Tina Spark, SOl Galen and Gwen Frere. **

**Please, sit back and enjoy. This has been rotting on my hard drive since I began it back in January. Four months in the making.  
**


	2. Night 2: Achieving

**Brushing the Sky**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **See first chapter. All standard disclaimers apply.

_Chapter 2

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The phone box on her back was a dead metal weight that made her stand straight and painful. To her left walked the leader of their Finder team, and to her right walked Sol Galen, an Exorcist. Her Innocence was a great spiked golden crown on her forehead, nestled in wavy black hair and contrasting against her Spanish tan. The rough pebbly Grecian road beneath their feet was hard going, but Sol, the Finders and the esteemed General Nine made good headway.

The sunset was beautiful, but the Finder with the phone box couldn't stop to admire it. She had at one point, watching the colors run together in a slew of beauty over the far-off rolling green hills as they painted rocks glorious shades of everything, but the leader of the Finder group had taken her by the arm and steered back up to the rest of the group. So she walked, one foot in front of the other, with Sol Galen on one side and her fearless leader in his indistinguishable beige coat on her other side. General Nine headed up the group, her little monkey chattering away into her ear and gently playing with her blond locks.

The Finder's name was Tina Spark, a woman just shy of twenty four. Her wide brown eyes held less of a spark than they did when she was younger, though her ears still jingled with their wing-shaped metal earrings. Her hair flipped out at the ends with much more ferocity than it had when she was younger, almost like the wings she had hanging from her ears. Their destination was a town, small and just this side of forgotten, from which a Finder had said there was a woman that destroyed the Akuma that invaded. The Finder was an older religious woman that ranted of Angels and feathers falling from the sky, but the lead merited investigation by a General and one of her students.

They rounded the bend in the road to come upon the road down to Feneos, the stone archway in the small wall around the settlement probably eons older than the wrought-iron gates that stood propped open by rocks. The Finders and Exorcists walked right through without any other looks, but Tina hung back a few hundred feet from the archway. She had a broad grin on her face, happy to simply stand in the middle of the path and stare at the wall that had stood for hundreds of years. Shooting up into the sky just beyond the town was the mountain of Kyllini, painted beautiful colors by the sunset. An exasperated Finder with feathers and beads braided into his hair came up the path and took the woman by the arm, forcefully dragging her down the road to town. She stumbled sideways down the road, still enraptured by the sheer age of everything around her.

The inn the group was staying at was practically empty. This was definitely a good thing since it needed the space to house the group of Exorcists and Finders. The sizable kitchen on the ground floor was full nearly to bursting with extra tables and chairs, the smell of warm Greek food wafting about and out the open doors and windows into the balmy summer night. The Finder with the beads in his hair drug Tina through the front door of the inn, and she deposited her phone box next to the door with the shields and other boxes. They found seats, though the brunette woman ended up sitting at a much-too-small table in a chair made for someone half her size with the daughter of the owner of the inn. She was an adorable olive-skinned girl with a wide smile and large black curls, dressed impeccably in a pink and white dress that looked like it was only for special occasions.

"My name's Scilla. I'm six." The girl finally said, after putting several pirogies and a few cuts of lamb on her plate and putting her napkin in her lap. "My mama said that lady with the gold hair is a General. Is she really?" Tina nodded, too busy with chewing through stewed lamb to speak. The wife of the man that owned the inn was an incredible cook, almost as good as Jeryy. _Almost_.

"Yeah. She's incredibly powerful." Tina took another bite of lamb, savoring the meat to the fullest. It was simply amazing stuff. The brunette swallowed before she continued. "My name is Tina Spark. Do you know about anything strange in this town?"

"There's the monsters that come down from the mountain every now and then..." _Akuma_. It figured, what with the apparent Innocence activity in Feneos. "But Lady Hermes gets rid of them before they do any damage." The six-year-old looked really excited at the mention of this woman that vanquished the demons. "She goes everywhere and destroys monsters! She's so cool!"

"Really?" Several more Finders were listening now after the girl's outburst, and Sol Galen was even leaning slightly towards the smaller table. "Has anyone ever seen her?"

"Not really. She flies with winged feet like the God Hermes and wears a pretty white dress. When she flies real fast feathers fall down from the sky!" A few Finders towards the kitchen door exchanged handfuls of bills, while another one near a window said something along the lines of 'Well what do you know, Sandra isn't as crazy as we thought'.

Dinner passed quickly after that, the Exorcists retiring to bed along with about half the Finder contingent. The rest of them took up stations on and around the inn, binoculars in hand and phone boxes on their backs. Tina Spark sat up on the roof, one arm around the chimney as she watched the sky with her binoculars. The lights of the town certainly weren't enough to drown out the natural light of the stars, though they shone enough to lightly illuminate the base of Mount Kyllini. It was towards the mountain, in fact, that Tina was watching for Akuma.

Watching for Akuma when you could be sleeping was a very, very boring job. Watching for them while balancing on a roof with a twenty-pound phone box strapped to your back was a bit more interesting, but still bordered on mundane compared to some of the things you could be doing. Like sleeping. Tina yawned with a hand over her mouth, then scrambled to grab the chimney again as she nearly fell down the roof. She steadied her gaze towards the base of the mountain, focusing on something that seemed to be moving. Upon further inspection, it was only a large ram jumping from boulder to boulder.

An hour went by as the Finder watched, her legs becoming steadily number as she sat on the roof and waited. She had slight red rings around her eyes from where she had pressed the binoculars to her face for so long, but other than that she wasn't showing too many signs of weariness. Adolfo, one of the other Finders, had brought her coffee an hour or so beforehand. Feneos was far too quiet to have anything to do with Innocence, it seemed.

Another hour passed, and then another, and it was nearing three in the morning before anything remotely of interest began to happen. Tina shifted in her seat, her legs full of pins and needles as she uncrossed and then recrossed her legs. She brought the binoculars back to her eyes and peered at the base of the mountain, scanning it for any signs of movement. A cow, a broken lead attached to its collar, grazed happily on a patch of nice green grass as the bell around its neck shook back and forth. It had probably escaped from a nearby farmer's paddock. Suddenly, in a flash of purple and an explosion, the cow disappeared. Tina swore loudly and pulled herself to her feet, her binoculars falling to her chest on the strap around her neck.

"Akuma!" She yelled, and slid down the shingled roof to grab ahold of the gutter and land on a second-story balcony. It was little Scilla's room, and the glass door out to the balcony was wide open. Tina pulled the door shut before grabbing another gutter and sliding down it to the ground floor. A few of the Finders around the building were readying shields, and the other ones that had been stationed further out were running towards them. Sol Galen looked out of her window with a slightly confused look on her face, beauty cream smudged across dark skin and her golden crown of Innocence nearly falling out of her hair. An explosion rocked the wall closest to the base of Mount Kyllini, and purple bolts began firing down the main streets. Several Finders swore loudly before running inside to rouse their companions. General Cloud Nine walked calmly out the front door of the inn, her little monkey clinging sleepily to her head. The woman's hair was undone, some of it in braids that no doubt the little white simian had made. Her whip trailed on the ground at her side, and the gold of her uniform glinted dully in the few lights that were turning on along the street.

"Should we hold a line anywhere specific?" Sol came out after her teacher, the beauty cream wiped from her face and her uniform hastily tugged on. Her crown was well-situated in her hair, though, and the gold and rubies looked almost sinister in the light.

"We meet them as close to the edge of the city as we can." General Nine said grimly, and Sol gave a wicked smile. She strode with purpose out into the center of the street, and put two fingers to her crown. "Destroy them before they take too many lives!"

"Sun Armor, activate!" The golden crown grew and warped, extending into a golden helmet with wicked spikes and a set of gold gauntlets and boots. Sol Galen crouched low to the ground and then jumped, rocketing into the air with nearly medical precision. As she took to the air green and white energy flared around her gauntlets. General Nine cracked her whip, and the little monkey on her shoulder snapped to attention. She pointed to several Finders, one of which was Tina Spark.

"You four, bring shields and come with me. Lau Jimin!" With another crack of her whip, the monkey grew to a monstrous size. It wore a feral grin, and in one large paw it picked the blond General up and sat her on its shoulders. Tina took a shield offered by Alonso, and the two of them ran after General Nine along with the two other Finders she had pointed to.

The battle towards the wall was a terrible one. Sol lit up the sky with bright sparks of green light and the explosion of Akuma, the same green energy flowing from her gauntlets in a horrific green fire. Lau Jimin did the same, leaping from Akuma to Akuma with fistfuls of energy to rip them apart. The Finders flitted from alley to alley, their shields trapping Level Ones with ease before they were destroyed in flashes of light. It was a tough battle, but they were still just barely managing to succeed.

A Level Two, its upper body like that of a three-headed dog with human arms and its lower body the hindquarters of a goat, bounced town the mountain with jumps that shook the ground. Its impacts created craters that sent rocks tumbling for the walls, and with a final bound it landed inside the city limits. Its three sets of mouths foamed and growled, and the center one howled so loud and in such a pitch that windows began to shatter outward in explosions of glass. Sol punched through a level One and threw another at the newcomer, but the Level Two batted it away like it didn't weigh a single thing. The hapless Level One exploded into a fiery cloud, and before anything else could be done Sol exploded outward from it with both her gauntlets and boots blazing with destructive green fire. She landed a kick to the three-headed monstrosity, then two successive punches, but then it raised a hand and swatted her away.

Looming over the Spanish woman's prone body as she lay in a pile of crumbled bricks and roofing, the three heads of the giant three-headed hellhound-goat combination salivated hungrily. From the shadows of an alley, Tina Spark watched helplessly with a jammed shield emitter as one of the Exorcists, one of the people she was sworn to protect and help, was about to be destroyed. She blinked suddenly, focusing instead on the downy white feather that was floating in front of her vision. She reached out and grabbed it, and it arced with a little bit of bright green energy. More began to fall from the sky, and two of the heads of the Level Two looked towards the sky the same time as Tina only to watch as a blur of white and silver came barreling down from the heavens to slice through the disgusting creature's body. It exploded in a rush of fire, and a shockwave flew outwards from the impact site. As soon as the person in white was there, though, they were gone.

Watching the flight path of the figure in white, Tina realized with a hint of jealousy that it was Lady Hermes. Her dress flew out from her in a beautiful fan of white silk as she sliced through Akuma with her metal sandals, the wings at her ankles flapping to keep her flying. The grace that the small woman exhibited in conjunction with her Innocence was amazing, flitting from one target to the next to obliterate them with a slice of the apparently razor-sharp edges of her feet. But she was quickly surrounded on every side, with only enough room to hover in place as feathers fell from her wings. With a kick the woman's feet became encased in fire, and she fell into a spin that blew it up into a funnel that destroyed the Akuma surrounding her.

On the ground, General Nine cracked her whip to command her giant simian Innocence. It leaped with a certain amount of finesse to brutally slam two of the Level Ones together before continuing on to the next batch. However, the blond Exorcist didn't see the snake-like Level Two creeping from the shadows behind her until it had her in its tail and had begun to squeeze. With an angry scream and a jet of green fire, Sol Galen punched a fist through the snake-woman Akuma's head to destroy it. She was bleeding from several spots on her face, and the blood was trickling out from beneath her spiked gold helmet. An angry blackening bruise spread across her exposed back and side, staining her tan skin a nasty purplish color.

"Stay close to Lau Jimin!" The black-haired woman yelled, barely heard over the screams of the people and the explosions the Akuma caused. With a nod Cloud Nine cracked her whip, and the giant white monkey turned its attention to her before crunching through the Akuma it had in its teeth and bouncing across rooftops towards its master. It couldn't arrive in time before the leader of the pack of Akuma made its appearance. It was tall and gangly, a dozen eyes adorning its face alone. It had two sets of wings, and eyes adorned every surface of them. All along its arms, across its chest and down its legs, the hundred eyes shifted erratically as they locked onto targets. What wasn't covered in eyes was a ghastly dark green, and what wasn't the green armor was long matted hair the color of congealed blood. General Nine swore loudly, followed quickly by Sol.

"You think you can destroy us?" The green Akuma rasped, its clawed fingers coming up to touch the bridge of where a nose might have been if it had had one. It looked like it was about to laugh. It did, and the sound was a grating, terrifying screech of nails against chalkboard. "Your puny weapons don't stand a chance against me, and I will call more!" In a careful movement, the Akuma raised an arm to block the oncoming white and silver kick. Sparks lanced off of its armor from the contact with the razor-sharp blades, and with its other arm it reached out and grabbed the edge of Lady Hermes' dress. With a sharp tug the small woman went hurtling to the ground, crashing through a roof and then out a wall into an adjoining street where she impacted another wall. With a yell Sol Galen jumped, her golden boots glowing with energy as she propelled herself towards her target. The green Akuma didn't even turn as it held out a hand and blocked her punch, only moving in the slightest as it began to laugh again. Sol plummeted like a stone towards the ground, her momentum gone and nothing to push off of. She landed in a crouch on her feet on the roof below, and sprung back up again. This time even her spiked crown lit up in green fire, and she headbutted the Akuma as hard as she could with the momentum she had. But still it only laughed before grabbing her by her curly hair and swinging her around once, twice, before throwing her back towards the ground.

"Argos! What brings you back again? The imminent defeat of another army?" Lady Hermes' voice was small and young, oddly at ease with her smaller body. She floated calmly in the air, her metal sandals glinting in the light of the fires that had been started by the Akuma. The many-eyed green one, without turning, answered.

"I've come to destroy you, everyone in this town, and perhaps everyone I can find. I will evolve beyond any level you have ever seen!" The green Akuma's laugh came again, and he threw back his head with a flip of his matted hair to let the sound ring loud and clear. Sparks flew from his side as the Lady Hermes kicked, but her bladed feet only glanced off his armor. She dove again, feathers flying from the wings on her ankles as she flew at her enemy. But again her feet only glanced off his armor, and this time he grabbed her by the dress again and whirled her around several times before throwing her up in the air. Just as he let go her metal sandals lit up into fire, and she left a trail of flames across the sky as she flew into the air. In a flash the eye-covered Akuma was above her, and a clawed hand sent her slamming into a cobblestone alleyway. General Nine, atop Lau Jimin, jumped for the impact crater she had created. She couldn't reach it in time, though.

Tina Spark screamed as the Lady Hermes crashed into the alley she hid in. The woman dove behind a half-full dumpster, her phone box making a loud banging noise as it hit the side of the metal bin. Above them, the eye-covered green Akuma cackled wildly. Purple energy was swirling around the eyes on his wings, coalescing into balls of light. Out from under the still white form of the Lady Hermes a series of purple lines spread, creating a target that looked like the eye of a peacock. Before anyone could intervene the Akuma fired straight at the target. They impacted with loud bangs, drowning out the screams of the woman in white they had hit. Cloud Nine cracked her whip and Lau Jimin leaped at the Akuma, Sol Galen throwing herself into the air as well. In the destroyed alleyway, Tina shed her phone box and carefully approached the impact crater that the Lady Hermes laid in. it could have been curiosity, it could have been her sense of duty to gather the Innocence that the woman would leave behind. After all, the Lady Hermes was an equip-type accomodator.

Her large black curls were limp and covered in dust, splaying about in a pool of blood. With a chilling start Tina realized that the woman was no woman, it was a six-year-old girl. It was the inn owner's daughter, Scilla. Her Innocence folded itself down as black stars grew across her body, her white dress ripped, stained and ruined. The wings exploded into a cloud of feathers, becoming small metal wing motifs that hung from the anklets the metal sandals folded into. Tina ran to her side and scooped the little girl up into her arms, careful of the holes the Akuma had made in her. Above, a battle raged on.

"What were you thinking?" Tina asked of the girl, and Scilla smiled her bright smile no matter how bloodstained it might have been. The stars were creeping up her neck and down her arms, turning her skin a mottled gray color.

"The anklets wanted-" Scilla was cut off by a cough, and more blood began to stain her white dress. "They wanted me to fight. So I did. But I don't wanna die!" The girl began to cry, big tears welling up in her eyes as they began to cloud over. Her cheeks were stained with stars, quickly overtaking her olive-toned skin with a nasty gray pallor.

"You did a good job. You're amazing when you fly! You must be so proud of what you do." Tina held the little girl close, a sad smile gracing her features as the girl's skin turned completely gray. "I'm kind of jealous, actually." Both of them were crying now, and the Finder knew it was only a matter of moments before all she'd be holding was a dress and an Innocence without an accomodator.

"Then you can have them. They hurt me anyways." With her last words, the little girl burst into a cloud of poison dust that Tina quickly shielded her nose and mouth against. The two little golden anklets pulsed with an angry light, growing brighter and brighter though it seemed almost like they didn't want to. In a sudden bright flash they were gone from the ground, leaving only two scorched marks on the broken cobblestones.

The Finder gasped in shock and lunged for the spot where the Innocence had been, patting it frantically. This wasn't good, not good at all! The General Nine and Sol Galen were engaged with a powerful Akuma that had killed one Exorcist already and the Innocence being fought over was gone. A nasty tightening feeling, followed by an excruciating burning sensation, graced her ankles in a way that made Tina scream and fall to the broken ground. She curled in on herself and grasped at her worn leather boots, only to come away with burns on her palms. With a rip the boots exploded into shreds of leather, cruel and sharp metal sandals wrapping into place around the Finder's legs. Bright white wings exploded outwards from her ankles as her now- bare feet were forced into a pointed position for the sandals to wrap around them.

In the strangest sensation, Tina Spark began to float. It was as if the wings on her ankles were defying gravity, letting her do what she had always wanted to, if not at the price of a little girl's life. But this wasn't the Finder's concern, not then. Right then the main concern was that she was _no longer a Finder_. She was an accomodator for an Innocence that had, until just moments before, been bound to a completely different person. Had she been an accomodator all along, or did Scilla's dying words actually have sway over the Innocence? In a nasty crash Tina was brought back to the world she currently resided in. Sol Galen picked herself up out of the street in front of the brunette, and then threw herself back in the air.

With determination, the former Finder righted herself in the air and sat the tips of her metal sandals on the ground. In both hands she took the beige Finder's cloak that had become like her best friend over the years, and ripped a good two feet off the bottom edge. In the light of the fires all around, the Innocence, the _Hermes Anklets _a voice not her own said, shone. In an instant she kicked off into the air, feathers flying all around as she came to a stop a good way above the town of Feneos. The feeling was exhilarating, flying. It was like nothing that Tina could have ever hoped for. She hovered for a moment, before her sights settled on the last battle still raging. The green Akuma that had killed Scilla fought hand-to-hand with General Nine's Lau Jimin, neither gaining much ground. The brunette narrowed her eyes and shot off like a rocket towards the fray, flipping around at the last second to try and ram her razor-sharp sandals into the back of the Akuma. But they glanced off, sparks flying everywhere as Tina spun out of control. She quickly righted herself and skidded across a rooftop, the tips of her sandals making deep ruts as sparks flew.

"I thought I killed you." The Akuma still stood in its match of strength with the giant white monkey, but many of its eyes were trained on the brunette that had just attacked. Sol Galen only spared the former Finder a glance before jumping at the Akuma, Argos, once more. Her fists lit up with green energy, but this time she forcibly grabbed the eye-covered demon with both hands. One hand fisted in its matted red hair, and the other grabbed one of its legs before Sol pulled with all her might and then aimed a kick right at the base of its back. It connected, and there was an ominous cracking sound as a hairline fracture appeared in the Akuma's armor. Tina leaped at it as Sol was thrown by the Akuma, and the razor edge of her sandal impacted the crack. It got slightly wider, and she spun around again before wedging the tip of her other foot into the crack and pushing. With a crunch the crack lanced all across Argos' back, up into one arm and across one leg.

"Move out of the way!" General Nine screamed, just as Argos spun around and smacked Tina off of his back and down towards the street. "Lau Jimin, full power!" The monkey roared and sprung forward, teeth elongating to razor sharp tusks as it sunk its brand new massive claws into the green-armored Akuma. As the monkey ripped and tore at the impervious creature, below Tina jumped carefully across the ground on the tips of her metal sandals towards where Sol had ended up thrown. They had already lost one Exorcist that night, they couldn't afford to loose another one!

"Madam Exorcist! Madam Exorcist!" She called, floating down into the small crater that the Exorcist had formed on impact. Sol punched her way out from under a pile of dirt and cobblestones, shaking the soil and gravel from her hair. She swore several times in her native tongue, picking her deactivated spiked golden crown from the dirt and putting it back in her curly black hair.

"If you address your equals as your betters, you'll never succeed." The Spanish woman said, fixing Tina with a look. "I don't know how you got that Innocence, and I don't want to. But you're going to help us kill that Akuma, because it's your God-given duty as an Exorcist." The brunette wanted to say something snide, something unappealing, but in a flash of light Sol Galen's Sun Armor was extended and lit to its fullest and she sprung back into the air in a wide arch. Tina pushed up off into the air again, but this time slower. A lance of pain went through her lower legs, an unfamiliar urge in her mind not her own that screamed at her _faster, fight, destroy, kill _in a way that made her want to scream.

Lau Jimin had the eye-encrusted Akuma by its head and feet, much like Sol had at one point, and was twisting it like one would do to someone to give them an Indian burn. It shrieked in an unholy pitch, its armor grinding together in the back where it was cracked. The giant monkey had torn the wings off of the green monster, and its back sparked angrily with bright purple energy. Sol landed a kick and a punch to its back, and the crack grew wider. She fell to the ground like a stone, then jumped up to the top of a building. Without warning, a scream rent the air. Cloud Nine's attention went from the Akuma to the woman in the ripped Finder's cloak, the metal around her feet glowing a nasty red. The wings were blackening, turning to ash as the woman slowly but surely fell from the sky. She was gripping her head in white knuckled hands, her scream high-pitched and full of pain.

Without warning, the metal sandals burst into flames and rushed forward of their own accord. The razor edges sparkled yellow as they rushed through the air, and flames lit up along the Akuma's back as they bit into the armor and carved ruts. Again it shrieked as Tina came back for a second attack, deeper hacks being bitten out of the side of the demon as Lau Jimin steadily pulled on it so as to rip it apart with its massive strength. As it began to rip apart, black blood spilling from the ruts carved in its side in viscous rivulets, Tina rose into the air with a trail of fire and ashes following her. It wasn't really her anymore, though. Now it was the _Hermes Anklets_, their second form unlocked of their own accord in a burst of nasty sentience that had burned a pattern in the former Finder's legs and feet. Without warning, she began to fall fast and hard. Ashes flew from her feet as the red hot metal sparkled, increasing speed at far too much of a rate to be normal.

"You can't kill me!" Argos screeched, claws trying and failing to rip at the shaggy white fur of Lau Jimin. "I'm unstoppable! I'm perfect! I'm the best that there is!"

With a bang and a flash of fire, the damaged Akuma's armor was cracked in half. The metal sandals embedded in its flesh made it boil, but couldn't penetrate all the way through. Without a command they burst into flames once more, and their accomodator screamed and gripped her head as she attempted to block out the pain. Argos joined the screaming, every one of the Akuma's eyes roving wildly as it squirmed to get free. With a final rip, Lau Jimin pulled the green monster into two halves. For a moment, Tina hovered on ashen wings that were no more than a charred skeleton. Then she fell, her eyes closing before she hit the cobblestones with enough force to create her own small crater.

The Hermes Anklets slowly receded from their form as cruelly-glowing metal sandals, leaving blackened burns all along the woman's shins. The anklets they turned into were colored gold, sizzling as they touched skin and glowed. The small wing charms that hung from the anklets shone dully in the light of the fires that had caught on the buildings all around, but they were of no comfort to the onlookers.

Gone was Tina Spark, Finder.

Now she was Tina Spark, Exorcist.

* * *

**When I first began this, Tina would be able to fly uninhibited. But then I figured that giving her unhindered flight, it would be too much like Lenalee's Dark Boots despite the hinderance of Lenalee hating her Innocence but still using it. **

**So I gave the Innocence a horrible downside and a sentience, like more and more of them are showing.**

**As before, read, review, sit back and enjoy.  
**


	3. Night 3: Hatred

**Brushing the Sky**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **If I owned it, there would be far more fanservice. And we would know more about Tina. But w/e.

_Chapter 3

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_

The crutches were a cold and hard reminder of just what she had given up. Certainly there was nothing wrong with having an Innocence, of having a way to fight, but they still reminded her of a life without pain. The bandages around her shins and feet were slightly bloodied, splotches of red and black leaking through the gauze in painful spots. But still the Order's newest Exorcist managed to fight her way to a spot at a table and carefully sit down. Jeryy sat a plate of spaghetti with scallops and fillet mignon in front of her, a glass of water and a cup of pills next to it. The brunette woman took her pills first, washing them down with a gulp and the promise of less pain.

With a careful swing of her legs, Tina Spark faced her food and picked up her fork. Her legs throbbed dully at the movement she had made, but already the pain medications were taking their effect and cutting the edge off. The brunette twirled noodles around her fork and took a bite, loving the taste of her favorite food more than even the pills currently giving her enough of a reprieve to stand and make her way to the mess hall.

A little girl, just a few years shy of her teens but still a bit small for her age, made her way into the mess hall. Her hair was done up into two pigtails, long and beautiful and making her look almost cherubic in a way as she flitted her way to the line for food and patiently waited. Tina paid her no mind, too wrapped up in her own food. Her entire table was deserted, enough space on both sides of her to seat every single Exorcist currently on active duty. But that was how it had been, ever since she had become the accomodator for the Hermes Anklets. The woman paused her eating, straightening her back to dab at her mouth with a napkin. With a sigh she planted an elbow into the wood grain and then leaned on her hand, picking idly at a spot on her white top. The Science Department still hadn't finished her uniform.

There was a scraping sound as a seat across from her was taken up, a bowl of tomato soup and a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches clinking onto the wooden table. Tina looked up, half expecting to see one of her Finder friends, but instead met the pretty purple eyes of the ten-year-old Lenalee Lee. The girl gave her a smile, and then dipped one corner of a cheese sandwich into her soup and took a bite.

"You need something?" Tina asked, blinking lazily as the drugs she was taking for the pain in her legs began to really kick in. It really was a shame that the Hermes Anklets seemed to hate her so much, she thought idly. If only the two of them could come to an agreement and be friends.

"Don't Finders always have to wear their coats?" It was the innocent question of a ten-year-old that was still learning the rules of one of the only homes she had known, but the question still sort of stung. The woman tilted her head to the side, realizing that the girl in front of her had a couple bandages stuck to her face and a band-aid on a scratch on her hand. The ten-year-old took a bite of cheese sandwich covered in tomato soup.

"Mine got ripped up in a fight with an Akuma." With an oddly large amount of effort, Tina twirled a bite of spaghetti around her fork and took a bite. It was a bit large, but nothing she couldn't handle. "You just got back from a mission, right?"

"Yep!" Lenalee looked so oddly... Happy when she spoke, her cheeks full of cheese and bread so that she could talk around it. It made her look like a chipmunk. "I went to Australia! I saw Kangaroos."

"Really." Tina took another bite, blinking languidly at the little girl across from her that looked just so at-ease with talking to her. "Kangaroos."

"Yeah, and Koalas and Bush Babies and an Albatross!" The ten-year-old quieted for a moment, taking another few bites and then a slurp of soup. "I heard there was a new Exorcist." She finally said, scratching uncertainly at a patch of gauze taped to her cheek. "Did you know that?"

"Yeah." Tina smiled warmly at the girl, and took another bite of spaghetti. The woman attempted to move her legs, but they seemed almost numb. Getting up would be hell when she had to go back to the infirmary to get her bandages changed. "I heard."

"I wonder what she can do?" Lenalee seemed so full of life, of questions, of wonder at herself not being one of the newer Exorcists anymore. "Johnny said it was special because she doesn't have hardly any synchronization but can still do all kinds of attacks."

It was true. The Hermes Anklets refused to synchronize to her beyond seventeen percent, but would still act on their own so as to attack. It certainly wasn't that the anklets were trying to protect her or give a certain amount of tough love conditioning, no. They had a mind of their own, and understood that they needed a host so as to destroy the Akuma. A look into the history of Feneos showed the Order all it needed to know on the topic, the Hermes Anklets had been used since ancient Greek times by a continuous line of users. There was no doubt that it wasn't the will of little Scilla's dying wish that had given Tina Spark the Hermes Anklets, but that the anklets were just latching on to the closest person at the time. It seemed almost like they were bitter that Scilla had died, though, and were taking that bitterness out on Tina's shins and feet.

"Real flight, fire attacks, cutting edges on the feet." Tina offered, and Lenalee seemed a bit downtrodden as she dipped her newest wedge of sandwich into her soup and took a big bite. She chewed and swallowed before speaking this time, instead of stuffing the food in her cheeks.

"You probably hate her too, don't you." The ten-year-old looked dark, her eyes loosing a bit of their shine as her bangs flopped in her face. The brunette smiled at the little Chinese girl, and reached forward to tilt her face up.

"I don't hate her. I don't hate her at all." It was a confused look that made its way across the small girl's face, before Tina went back to twirling her spaghetti and eating. "She's me." The woman said around a mouthful of noodles, scallops and fillet mignon. The way that the girl's eyes lit up and got all wide made her look absolutely adorable, and if the former Finder's legs hadn't been bandaged she would have stood up and hugged the girl.

"You have an Innocence?" She cried, a smile lighting up onto her features. It was like she had been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time, and the look she had was as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. "You can fly now!" She realized, and Tina blinked in surprise at the gushing display. "Just like you always wanted to!"

"Yeah," the brunette began, a smile gracing her features. "I guess I can." Before she could stop her, though, Lenalee had ducked under the table in a flash of dark pigtails to look at the woman's Innocence. But the ten-year-old wasn't met with a pair of shoes like her own, or even a set of matching toe rings. Instead she was met with a swathe of white bandages stained slightly with black and dark red. Around her ankles the gauze was browned with the constant heat emitted by the silently seething Hermes Anklets, which were only a bump in the gauze that encircled the space just above each ankle in a nearly-scalding embrace.

"What happened?" In a moment the girl was back in her seat, careful to reign in the kicking she had been doing since she was still so small that she didn't really reach the ground from her seat.

Both internally and externally, Tina Spark sighed a deep sigh that made her seem deflated.

"My Innocence doesn't like me. It's upset that the last person it was attached to died, so it took it out on me when I was being too slow to destroy the Akuma that killed her." Absently, the woman twirled a fork of spaghetti and stuck it in her mouth. She washed it down with a glass of water and a slight burp that she covered with one hand. "But I'm getting used to it. A couple burns aren't going to clip my wings." She took another sip of water and sighed again. "Besides, I'm high as a kite on pain meds for my burns. If that isn't a jump-start to keep me flying I dunno what is."

Lenalee looked confused at the woman's last statement, but dipped her sandwich in a gratuitous amount of soup and took as big of a bite out of it as she could in an effort to finish her food before it got cold. She began swinging her feet again slightly, this time from side to side instead of forwards and backwards. Her feet, encased in a small pair of black metal flats, made clunking noises as they hit the supports of the bench she sat on. The two sat in silence for a while, eating with gusto so as to savor Jeryy's cooking before the castle decided that hot food was a luxury not even Exorcists could have.

"Do you still hate me?" Lenalee was the first to break the silence, and Tina blinked in surprise and looked over at the girl. She continued to eat as though she hadn't said anything, though they both knew that wasn't true. The brunette woman smiled serenely, a side-effect of the painkillers.

"Do you still hate your Innocence?" She asked, watching carefully through half-lidded eyes as the ten-year-old mulled the question over with another bite of grilled cheese and tomato soup.

"I'm always gonna hate it 'cause of what it did. I'll use it to protect my friends and family, but I don't like it. You can't make me." The defiance on the face framed by black bangs was simply too cute. Tina Spark, her fork in her mouth, laughed around a bite of spaghetti.

"I'm not trying to get you to like it. I'd never do that. You can do whatever you want and hate anything you like." The brunette began after swallowing her mouthful of noodles. She looked down, surprised that it was the last bite. "I'm asking if you hate the ability to jump up and touch the stars."

"Why do you care?" Lenalee carefully asked, her eyes guarded as she watched the woman across from her finish her glass of water. Tina sighed and looked across the table, her face lighting into a small smile.

"Because even if you hate your Innocence, you shouldn't squander a power like that. Flying is amazing, and being able to go up and not come back down is the kind of chance that very few people get." The brunette woman looked wistful as she spoke, and there was a slight scraping noise as she tried to move her deadened and burnt legs and failed. "I gotta wait for my legs to heal before I can do any more flying."

"I'll always hate the Dark Boots." Tina nodded, solemn. She carefully swung her legs out into the aisle and picked up her crutches, struggling to her feet without any help. Her bandages, clearly seen in the electric lighting overhead, were blackened in parts and daubed with red. The wrapping around the bulges above her ankles were a light shade of heat-induced brown, the bandages brittle with artificial age.

"Then you have your answer." With the slow and halting grace that only someone with too much practice could pull off, Tina Spark made her way out of the mess hall towards the infirmary.

Now if only she could bring herself to hate her own Innocence for its transgressions against her.

* * *

**Where Lenalee hates her Dark Boots despite the fact that they don't want to hurt her whatsoever and do anything and everything to protect her, Tina's Hermes Anklets despise her but she can't bring herself to hate them. She loves to fly, totally and completely, and would do anything and everything to keep that flight. She cannot bring herself to hate the Hermes Anklets, not because she understands that they don't like her, but because they let her fly. She is totally and completely enamored with that fact. **

**As before, review. I survive on them. You people don't seem to realize that.  
**


	4. Night 4: Aftermath

**Brushing The Sky**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **I'm talking Cajun French IRL and if my mother ever hears me she'll never let me live it down. So oui, dis fille's got a few more problems den writin' fiction f' a series she don' own.

_Chapter 4

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_

The new boy was cute in a wide-eyed scruffy huggable way. At fifteen he was a little too noodle-like, a little too gangly to be anything else, especially with the extremely wild mop of red hair that he kept tied back with a headband that was so threadbare everyone was practically placing bets on how long it would be before it simply fell apart from the sheer force of will of the hair it held back. But under the surface of love, and acceptance, and happiness, there was a feeling of relief. Finally, another Exorcist.

Tina Spark, five months past twenty-six and nothing to show for it save the immovable anklets she wore, wore a black dress. It was a shoddy thing, long sleeves with ratty cuffs and a very high collar that buttoned all the way up and down the whole front of the dress. The circles under her eyes were deep and dark, her eyelashes seemingly permanently clumped together from her mourning. This was war, she reminded herself constantly. People die. Especially in battle.

That battle, though, had been hard-pressed to win. So many people had died, so many of her old friends. Sure, some of the people at the Order treated the Finders as though they were a dime a dozen, because a lot of the time they were. But it was the strangely maddening thought that if Tina hadn't gone on the mission to Feneos she could have been among the dead that really struck her. She had been a Finder once. At heart, she would probably always be a Finder. That made the loss of Alonso, of James, of Demeter and Augustus and Layla and Anna Marie all the more acute.

Tina Spark hadn't just lost support, or cannon fodder, or field guides. She had lost comrades.

Carefully, the woman picked at her flan. It was a little too sweet, too cloying and thick for her tastes, but she ate it anyway because her next option for dessert was banana ice cream and she couldn't stand that stuff. She was better off with pot roast. Around her scarred ankles the Hermes Anklets emitted a dull burn, which at one point had been excruciating but now was nothing more than an annoyance. She crossed her legs and her anklets banged together with a sharp clack, the wing-shaped charms hanging from the sides jingling merrily. As the brunette shook her head, the wings that hung from her ears did the same.

"Tina?" The woman in question looked up, her mouth full of sickly sweet dessert. A blond stood in front of her, all straight-cut bangs and glasses and lots of cleavage down the front of her particularly-tailored black and white uniform. "Something wrong, mon ami? Y' lookin' like y' jus' watch'd de gators et y' dog." It was Gwen Frere, the third part of General Cloud Nine's team of Exorcists. Twenty, born in Paris France and raised in the bayous of Louisiana, the woman's power, wit and sheer force of will were all something to be reckoned with.

"I'm fine." The brunette said after swallowing her bite of flan and setting her fork down. "Nothing to get worked up about." Gwen sat herself down across from her teammate and sat both hands on the table between them, the nasty-looking whip around her waist adorned with thorns gleaming darkly. The Rose Chain Innocence was about as dastardly as its mistress, contorting to any shape that was needed be it a grapple, whip, flail or mace.

"Don' take me for no coyoon, Tina. If y' fine, I'm de premier priestess'a bad Juju in all N'Awlins." The two women fixed each other with _looks_, the kind that would make any sane man break for the door in a fit to leave the country. "Y' seen de new homme, Lavi? De boy's not been 'ere a week an' already his face's ended up between me breasts four diff'nt times." Both Tina and Gwen snickered at the imagery, especially since it seemed as though the boy was too sure-footed to possibly loose his balance to fall and plant his face in the Frenchwoman's chest. "De homme's cute enough t' git away wit' it, though. 'S long as 'e don' do much more'n fall int' m' chest I ain't about t' stop 'im. Let 'im live it up while de war lets 'im, non?"

The light topic may have been no more than an effort to get Tina to smile, but hell if it wasn't working well enough. She broke into a laugh rather abruptly, making the blond across from her jump before smiling warmly as she realized that all Tina really needed was a distraction. Her bright blue eyes crinkled at the edges behind her glasses, her smile reaching everywhere. Suddenly distracted, the blond watched as Daisya Barry dribbled his Charity Bell between his feet while attempting to eat.

"Makes me feel almost sorry I decked him when he gave me that flying tackle-hug the other day." Gwen's mouth dropped open as she whipped around to look at the woman across the table from her. "Yeah, I know. I didn't know who it was so I smacked him before I realized just who I was hitting."

"Mon Dieu! Y' de one dat gave 'im de black eye?" The blond smacked her teammate on the arm, making her elbow skitter across the tabletop and land in the remains of her flan. Tina made a face and picked up her napkin, wiping dessert from the fabric of her black dress. It made a sticky vanilla-smelling smear all along the black cloth, eliciting a disgusted sound from the woman. "Dat's what y' get f' blackenin' de cute p'tit homme's only eye, Tina."

"Don't you pull that Juju karma crap on me, Gwen." The two stuck their tongues out at each other in a friendly if not childish gesture, and the blond Frenchwoman stood. She smiled and adjusted her square glasses, brushing straight-cut bangs back into place.

"De principal b'hind it ain't crap, mon ami." Gwen paused, then shook her head. "Non. I'll be seein' y' later, den. G' put on y' uniform n'stead o' de dress, we got dat mission we leave on t'night."

"I will." Tina promised, absently wiping flan off her sleeve.

Gwen Frere left her friend to finish what was left of her flan in peace.

And so Tina Spark sat, idly picking at the dessert as she sighed softly.

She sat for a while, occasionally taking a bite of the flan in an attempt to finish it instead of leaving it. Around her, people came and went without giving her a glance. Occasionally, the Exorcist crossed and uncrossed her scarred legs with clicks and jingles from her anklets. She picked at the dessert until it was done, then picked up the plate and brought it to the plate receptacle and left the mess hall.

It was cold in the halls, and the bone-chilling force seeped into every little bit of Tina's body as she walked. She kept her steps light since her shoes were only light and small slippers, and as she walked she began to hop carefully from one floor tile to the next. It was childish behavior, yes, but at that moment the woman was feeling just a little bit nostalgic. With a jump she landed on her tip toes, her dress fanning out around her legs as she landed and then jumped again and skipped across tiles with careful bounds.

This was living. It was simple, and it was alright, but in the end it was just living. Nothing too special about it except for the powerful weapon that had latched onto her with a burning grip. Due to her burns, which made her entire shins one shiny pink mass that would never, ever be any different, she would always wear small shoes that wouldn't be broken by the Hermes Anklets. She couldn't wear stockings because the anklets were too close to the flesh, and her legs were always cold. But everything was alright, she couldn't care any less about the cold or the slow burn at her ankles, or the warping burns all across her shins. She could fly, and she loved every moment of it.

Of course life wasn't perfect, since everyone would die anyway. Such was their burden, or sometimes the literal cross to bear given the Judeo-Christian forms that many of the Innocence took. Some would die faster, some would live longer, some would outlast the war completely. But it was only a matter of time for everyone's times to come. The Black Order's last large battle was a testament to that fact. Suddenly, Tina Spark's want to change out of the dirty, stained, threadbare old black dress was waning.

"Tina?" The question was sudden, and made the brunette woman jump and scream. She caught her breath and gave the thirteen-year-old girl next to her a look, but didn't say anything. "Are you alright?"

"Fine, kid." She managed, gripping at her chest with one hand in a vain attempt to stop the erratic beating. "Those boots make you that quiet or are you just absorbing that Kanda guy's nonexistant ninja skills?" Lenalee smiled and giggled, but it seemed almost like it was forced. Her large eyes held just as much sadness as Tina's did. The girl considered the entire Order her family, and the battle had been a crushing blow. The girl still had a few bandages taped to her cheeks, but she no longer had to walk around with an IV bag.

"The new boy... Lavi." Tina paused, listening carefully to the girl as she spoke. "Everyone's doing something nice for him to make him feel welcome, but I can't think of anything." The brunette blinked at the thirteen-year-old, her eyebrow raising higher.

"And you want _me _to help you?" She asked, trying to clarify. Hadn't the black-haired girl realized by now that while there wasn't any love lost between the two of them, it wasn't like Tina was an advice columnist or something? "Try asking Sol. Or Gwen, you know? Gwen just got back from Turkey yesterday and we're leaving for Istanbul tonight. You wanna ask her I would suggest doing it as soon as you can."

"I can't understand her when she talks half the time." Lenalee muttered, a blush of embarrassment creeping across her cheeks as she looked at the floor and her metal shoes. "Besides!" She began, her head snapping up. Her eyes were full of determination. "Lavi follows you and Sol and Gwen around constantly, he likes you! You can tell me what I should do!" Tina chuckled, and put a hand to her forehead. That boy was almost more trouble than his adorable self could get him out of.

"No," the woman began, and she used one hand to draw a circle in the air pointing to her chest. "He's following these. Well, these and Sol's skirt. He's following these on me and Gwen, though." Lenalee broke out into an even redder blush, probably mortified. "Don't blame him, though. He's fifteen and probably couldn't keep his eye in his head even if he wanted to. He'll grow out of it." They were only a skip, hop and jump from the older Exorcist's room, and she began walking in that direction with sure steps that didn't flit from tile to tile.

"I want to be nice, make him feel welcome. The Science Department is making his uniform, Kanda sparred with him for a while, and even General Sokaro tried to make a good impression!" Tina paused, her hand over the door knob, at that last one.

"I thought Sokaro whet his appetite upon the souls of his apprentices, which is why they stopped giving the young ones to him." She said, turning to look at the thirteen-year-old girl.

"He gave him a nasty Dutch rub and offered to go take him to get a tattoo." Understanding blossomed on the older woman's face, and she nodded serenely before going into her room.

"Well I dunno what to tell ya, kid. I already gave him my gift. He's not getting much more than a shiner from me." The brunette left her door open, and gestured around the small stone-walled room. Her bed had red sheets and a cream comforter, and her window had lace curtains. It was a little chilly, but not too terrible. "Besides, as you can see I'm not really one for doing much gift-giving. I'm useless as a source of information."

Lenalee wasn't listening with all of her attention anymore, instead she was looking around the room in a little bit of awe. She had never seen the inside of Tina Spark's room before. It was oddly... Comforting. There was a small collection of stuffed animals on the windowsill, and the top of her dresser was devoid of all photographs. Instead, it was stacked high with a huge collection of skeins of yarn in every color imaginable. A long glass flute perched precariously on the edge of the dresser was full of knitting needles and crochet hooks, all made of differently-colored metals. A violent orange skein of yarn caught the thirteen-year-old's eye, and she cocked her head to the side as she tried to remember just where she had seen an orange just like that before.

"You remember how to knit?" The question made the girl twitch a bit in surprise, but she didn't jump. Carefully, the Chinese girl wracked her brain. Tina laid on her bed, one foot in the air with the light glinting off the part of the Hermes Anklets that was affixed there.

"Only vaguely. I'll probably remember if I try hard enough." Lenalee paused, before advancing towards the pile of yarn balls. "Can I use some of your yarn to make him something?" With a snap, the girl looked at the woman for confirmation. Tina nodded, shrugging.

"I don't do it much anymore since we're always on missions. Take what you want, a few have partially-done projects stuck to them anyway." With a few deft movements, the violently orange skein of yarn was in Lenalee's hands along with the needles still affixed to the top of the half-finished scarf it led to. There was enough yarn on the roll to finish the scarf.

"Thank you so much!" The black-haired girl said, smiling widely. With a quick bow she was gone, the scarf trailing out behind her as she ran. Back in her room, the Exorcist on the bed couldn't help but smile.

Tina Spark had done something good. Even if it _was _for that fool of a girl.

Two weeks later when Tina and Gwen returned from their mission to Istanbul with torn and burnt uniforms and a hankering for sleep and relaxation, they were greeted at the underground pier by an outgoing mission. The cute little scruffy Lavi, upon seeing Gwen get up and out of one of the gondolas, promptly tripped himself up with his own feet and landed his face in her chest. She grabbed him by the back of his uniform and hauled him to his feet, then dusted him off with an admonishment and made her way zombie-like up the stairs towards the actual Order and her room and bed.

The redhead grumbled lightheartedly and adjusted the scarf around his neck, which was a more muted shade of its apparently violent orange in the torchlight. At one end it was a mass of ordered stitches and chevrons, but towards the center it turned into a mess of knobby stitches and knots that eventually smoothed themselves out. It was the knobby bit that he fingered lightly, smiling quietly to himself behind the bright orange scarf.

As she got out of the gondola with the help of a Finder named Rembrandt, Tina Spark couldn't help but smile.

Maybe that girl wasn't such a fool.

* * *

**Tina, though she's an Exorcist at this point, still considers herself more a Finder than anything. Her friends, life-long or otherwise, are all Finders. Her comrades in protecting Exorcists and finding Innocence are not other Exorcists, in her opinion, but the Finders she's known for so long. **

**This chapter really explored the battle that is seen in Lavi's flashback during his fight inside his mind. While we only see that he sets sights on Lenalee and she gives him the mother of all kicked puppy looks that would make anyone, even a Bookman, grow a heart, your focus is more on that and less on the fact that the entire chapel is filled to the bursting with coffins. Each and every one is a Finder- in fact, Lenalee isn't mourning another Exorcist but the coffin of a Finder. As Tina was once a Finder, and she still feels for the Finders, how then would this battle have affected her?**

**As always, if you read please review. I did work hard on this, you know.  
**


	5. Night 5: Slaughter

**Brushing The Sky**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **I don't even own Tina. Does that tell you anything?

_Chapter 5

* * *

  
_

It had started as a mission to find and retrieve General Cloud Nine.

When they had begun it was easy, just three friends in a carriage in the middle of California being drawn by four horses and driven by a Finder. Barnum and Bailey had set up their circus tents in the next town, and their star attraction was an animal tamer with a monstrous monkey. Sol had the windows open and was getting a tan from the desert sun, Gwen was fanning herself with a white fan she had pulled from somewhere in her uniform, and Tina slept across two seats with her feet sticking out another open window. There wasn't much to do when surrounded on all sides by dust, hills, scrubgrass and the occasional cactus.

"Weren't you raised in this country? You're used to the heat." Sol pulled her head inside the carriage and brushed a hand through her hair, the gold spikes of her crown quickly put back into place just above her forehead.

"I'm from de bayou o' Louisiana, mon ami. Dis 'eat be de dry kind o' 'eat an' I'm used t' tha wet'n muggy kin'." Gwen fanned herself harder, taking her glasses off and sticking them between her breasts since they kept sliding down her nose. "Y'got any way t' make de trip a li'l cooler? 'M all ears."

"Stick your head out the window, swamp rat." Gwen promptly smacked the Spanish woman on the arm with her now-closed fan.

"'M a bayou gator an' y' know it!" She said indignantly, and the two burst into peals of laughter like only a close-knit group could do. Across from them, their companion Exorcist awoke with a start and nearly fell off the seats she laid across.

Just past twenty-nine, Tina Spark was just a smidgen angry for being woken up. She wiped a sweaty palm across her face, makeup smearing slightly since it was melting in the heat. She was a right frightful sight, her eyeliner becoming a puddle despite the fact that her uniform consisted of a top with only the left sleeve and a pair of black shorts with white lines up the sides. Curse that dry heat, even if the wind felt good against her feet. The black leather studded with gold stars of the brunette's belt stuck to the slightly exposed skin of her stomach, though all three of them fairly glistened and Gwen's glasses were sliding out of the bottom of her cleavage.

"Are we there yet?" Tina pulled her feet back inside the carriage and slipped her thin flimsy shoes on, wiping a hand across her brow in an attempt to wipe sweat away. It didn't really work.

"Non. De circus is in de next town, an' it shouldn' be long 'fore we git dere." The blond fished for her glasses before they fell down into her lap and wiped the sweat off the lenses onto the fabric of her pants. With a sleeve the Frenchwoman wiped her nose off, and put the glasses back on to look out one of the windows at the scenery passing by. A longhorn bull, its hide a solid black, grazed contentedly on a patch of scrubgrass. It had probably escaped from a nearby ranch. Tina laid back down and stuck her once again shoeless feet out the window, and Sol stuck her head back out the window.

Easy. Right.

It was a few more minutes before the carriage jerked to a stop, Tina falling to the floor with a yell and Gwen's glasses falling from her nose. Sol had a puzzled look on her face, her attention focused out in front of their ride. In the scramble Gwen picked up her glasses and put them back on, sticking her own head out a window so as to get a good look. Tina quickly joined her. Two boys stood in front of the horses, only about fifty feet away. One had black hair, the other had long wavy blond tresses. They both dressed in black and held something in their hands, though from the distance none of the Exorcists could tell what they were.

All three of them definitely knew one thing, though. The boys were gray. They were Noah.

Sol flung herself out of the window she hung from, hitting the dusty ground in a roll before springing to her feet. A few stems of grass stuck out of her curly black hair and out of the short dress of a uniform she wore, and at a command her Sun Armor extended into its helmet, gauntlets and boots. Green fire lit up at her fists and ankles, and she slid into a stance. On the other side of the carriage, Tina and Gwen exited carefully and with skeptic's eyes. Tina slipped on her shoes, adamantly attempting to ignore the steadily-growing burn that encircled her ankles.

"Holy shit!" The black-haired Noah was the first to speak, leaning forward to get a better look at the three women and then snapping backwards. "Hot chicks! Fucking sweet!" He shouldered his blond companion, and the hunched teen stumbled before pushing back.

"Don't push 'Dero, hii!" The two grabbed each other's coats and pointed the things in their hands- guns, a pair of golden Colt .45's -at each other's heads. The blond one, the apparently more limber of the two, quickly had the black-haired one in a chokehold with his gun pointed at his head.

"An' dese ah s'posed t' be de Noah we should be fearin'?" Gwen was slowly unraveling her Rose Chain from around her waist, the thorned end splitting into the end of a cat-o-ninetails. Tina shrugged, her Hermes Anklets still going unactivated as she padded her way towards the front of the carriage. The Finder, a rather unlucky man by the name of Toma, looked scared out of his mind. He had seen what the Noah could do firsthand apparently, since he had been part of the Rewinding Town incident in Germany.

"You high-tail it out of here and get General Nine, you got it? Explain the situation to her if someone else hasn't already, and get her back to Headquarters." The Finder looked down at her, bandages across the lower part of his face obscuring everything but his eyes.

"I'm not allowed to do that, Madam Exorcist." He said, his tone just a bit defiant. Tina smiled at him, the gesture disarming in its own way.

"You gotta." She said, and gestured towards the two boys that were now tussling in the middle of the road. "If they get to General Nine, and she's the Heart, then just how screwed do you think the world is going to be?" The Finder nodded, his gaze resolute from what the brunette woman could tell. He snapped the reins and drove the carriage towards the two boys, who didn't even really notice until it was right on top of them and they could do no more than jump out of the way.

The three-woman Exorcist team watched the dust cloud fade off into the distance until the two Noah boys pulled themselves back onto the road. Their coats and corset-laced pants were dusty, and they had grass sticking out of their hair. The blond one quickly began to finger-comb the offending bits of nature out, whereas the black-haired one only shook his head a few times.

"Hey babe!" He yelled, even though he watched carefully as Sol jumped the span between herself and the other two women on her team. When none of them answered, he tried again. "Hey blondie!" Gwen pointed at herself, feigning innocence as she reaffirmed her grip on the Rose Chain's handle. "Ditch the uniform and come hang with us!"

"'Kin mon amis come?" The blond woman asked, crossing her arms under her bust and blatantly ignoring the part where the boy had told her to ditch her uniform. Both boys immediately stopped looking at the women's faces.

"'Dero has no idea what she just said, but it sounded hot, hii!" The blond grinned and twirled his gold Colt around one finger, watching with interest as the three women promptly slapped hands to faces or simply rolled their eyes.

"Can we help you boys with something?" Sol asked, the helmet of her Sun Armor tipping back to reveal her face but not deactivating. The one with the black hair grinned, and took the blond by the neck. The two aimed their guns at each other's heads again. The blond, the little light curling above his head bobbing like that of a deep-sea fish's, dug into his pants with his free hand and pulled out a playing card with a black and white diamond-pattern back.

"Is one of you Sol Galen, hii?" Immediately, all three of the Exorcists were on the offensive. Sol's Sun Armor once again flipped over her face, and Gwen wrapped the business end of the whip-form Rose Chain around her knuckles. Metal crept out and encased Tina's feet in her pair of razorbladed sandals, her feet forced into a pointed position. With a flap of the wings at her ankles, the brunette began to float.

"We'll take that as a yes, then." The black-haired teen grinned, though not in the same way that little Allen had described the Noah girl named Road as doing. This smile was lecherous, whereas hers had apparently been full of saccharine sweetness that just barely masked a rotting core. In a sudden movement, both teens had their golden Colts pointed at the Exorcists. "Red Bomb!" They shouted, firing.

The fireball that shot down the dusty California road towards the three women was far too large to have come from the two guns, but it seemed as though it had. Sol jumped out of the way and hit the dirt in the scrubland, and Tina grabbed Gwen and the two flitted up into the air. Another fireball flew into the air after the two, but they flew out of the way. With a nod from the blond, Tina let her friend go. The Rose Chain flicked outward as she plummeted towards the two on the ground, and she tucked herself into a flip.

"Rose Mace! Gian' size!" with a final flip the rosebud at the end of the Innocence she held whipped around with growing momentum as it grew and gained a massive set of spikes. With a mighty crunch the mace impacted the dusty road. The Noah managed to roll out of the way in time, and now had their guns pointed at Sol. She bounced towards them in a swift push of her legs, headed forward gauntlets-first in an attempt to land a solid punch to either body. In unison the two leveled their guns at her and pulled the triggers.

"Blue Bomb!" The ice that flared out from their guns managed to catch Sol on the arm, knocking off her balance and sending her head-over-heels into the dusty California ground. She struggled to her feet as she held onto her shoulder, where her arm turned to a lump of hard ice that looked as though it would take a while to melt. The Sun Armor fired a few times inside, but nothing more than sparks appeared and created the smallest of spaces to maneuver.

"Sol!" Tina performed a tight flip in the air and dropped straight down at the two, the Hermes Anklets seeking fleshy targets. The twin Noah laughed and just barely jumped out of the way, the black-haired one dragging the blond away from the impact crater Tina had created. With twin grins, they turned their attentions onto the Spanish woman who was frantically firing and re-firing the gauntlet that was still trapped in the ice in an attempt to get enough room to flex and break it.

"_You're _Sol Galen, hii?" The blond cocked his head to one side, his stitched-up grin still present. Behind the two of them, Gwen just barely finished the transformation time it took to turn the Rose Chain back into its whip form. She began to spin it above her, taking a ready stance as she began her attack. Hot air whistled through the links in the Rose Chain in a high pitch, but nobody paid it any heed.

"What of it?" With a flex, the Sun Armor's gauntlet shattered the ice encasing Sol's arm. Tina flitted up into the air, her legs tucked carefully under her as she assessed the situation. The Hermes Anklets burned angrily at her hesitance, penetrating deeper with their heat than the deadened nerves they usually contacted.

Tina Spark, Sol Galen and Gwen Frere were almost outnumbered. They all knew it. None of them cared.

"See, now, we get to kill you." Sol's eyes widened just as the two leveled their guns at her once again. "Shame, since you're hot." With a synchronized yell of 'Green Bomb!' the two fired, and the Spanish woman made a stance to destroy the projectile coming for her. When she punched it, though, she was quickly pulled into the massive glob of green goo that then rolled a few times and stuck in place on the dusty ground. Inside, Sol quickly grasped for her throat as small bubbles permeated the goo around her mouth. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move quite right, couldn't do much more than suffocate.

Without hesitation Tina Spark flipped around several times in the air while the Hermes Anklets burst into flames, ending finally in a feet-first dive that quickly turned the goop into a raging inferno. Sol bounced forward almost immediately and landed a punch to the face of the blond teen, sending him flying quite a ways into the scrubland. Without any warning, the gun was suddenly snatched from the black-haired teen's hand by a thorned whip. All of a sudden, the odds looked better. Tina took her place back in the sky, watching carefully. At her stillness, the Hermes Anklets seethed.

"Y' chances don' look so good, mis amis." Gwen spun the golden Colt .45 she had stolen around one finger, her eyes heavily lidded and an eyebrow sardonically raised. "S' git back ta de Millennium Earl an tell'im dat de Black Order don' take shit from filles lahk y'self." The blond with the little light on his headband picked himself up out of the broken brown grass, pawing at the stalks and twigs entwined in his curly locks. He picked up the card with the diamond-printed back, turning it to one side and then the next as he forgot the twigs and things in his curls.

"Devit, hii! Deviiiiiiit!" He yelled, running at a crazy lope with his golden gun trailing behind him in a loose grip. "We gotta get Tina Spark and Gwen Frere too, hii! Hurry and get your gun back so we can kill her and go find them!" Immediately, the Exorcists steeled themselves for a fight much larger than they anticipated. Tina dropped to the ground next to Sol, the tips of her metal sandals just barely brushing the dirt. Gwen took her time walking to her teammates, though she never stopped twirling the steadily-growing mace-form Rose Chain. The blond and his companion faced them, and it was silent for a moment. In about seventy five or so years, the scene could be cataloged as one that was straight out of a Western.

A voice cried out in Tina Spark's head, the metal around her legs slowly but surely heating up as almost a warning. _Destroy, destroy, kill _the Hermes Anklets hissed, seething at her inactivity while in the face of two Noah. The brunette shook her head, wing-shaped earrings jingling merrily in stark contrast to the situation. In full view of the black-haired teen it had been stolen from, Gwen slid the golden Colt .45 into her top in a way that made both boys wolf whistle.

"Throw me." Tina said, her teeth gritted against the slight sizzle of hot metal against her skin. Sol nodded, and held out a hand to her teammate. "Gwen, hit them hard and fast as a distraction." Gwen nodded as well, swinging her mace as it began to steadily grow. Tina held out a hand, and Sol grabbed it in one gauntlet. The wings at the brunette's ankles began to flap, and the Spanish woman she held onto crouched low before springing into the air. The two of them shot off in a flurry of dust and feathers into the air, just as Gwen swung her Rose Chain mace around a final time and pounded it into the ground where the two teens were. As she snapped the mace back to safety, Sol twirled around twice and then shot Tina at the Noah like a bullet, feet-first. The Hermes Anklets burst into flames, leaving a trail of fire behind the Exorcist as she shot through the air. Thoroughly dazed, the Noah didn't realize she was coming until they were thrown through the air in a massive explosion of dirt, fire and concussive force equal to that of a thousand pounds of TNT.

"Gerroff, 'Dero!" The two had landed on top of each other, the blond face-first in the dirt over his companion's torso. The black-haired boy shoved the blond off and scrambled to his feet, madder than a hornet. "You bitches think you're all that?! We're Jasdebi! We've got bigger fish to fry!"

"Like who, exactly?" Tina asked, alighting on the ground with her teammates once again. Sol flexed her gauntlets and Gwen wrapped one end of the now whip-form Rose Chain around one hand, holding it tight between her fists.

"Cross Marian." Jasdebi spoke in unison, their voices suddenly resigned-sounding as they made faces at even the notorious General's name. Again the blond held up the diamond-patterned playing card, then shook it a few times and held it next to his ear. "Really, hii?" He said after a moment, cocking his head to one side as he looked over at the group of Exorcists they faced. "Devit, hii!" The blond yelled again, stuffing the card back in his pants as it made something that sounded almost like an indignant squeak. The black haired half of Jasdebi, the one named Devit, smacked the other one over the head.

"What?" He snapped, only to get punched back and a Colt .45 stuck in his face. His assaulter pointed to the three Exorcists they faced, waving the gun with his other hand.

"_They're _Tina Spark and Gwen Frere and Sol Galen, hii! We have them all right here, hii!" Devit smacked the blond back, but they didn't tussle any longer. The wind blew once in a gust down the road the fighting had moved from, making the scrubgrass and tumbleweeds all bend the same way in a single wave as the gust passed.

"Fuck." Devit finally said, his eyebrows furrowing together as his back straightened into almost a businesslike pose. 'Dero gave him a questioning, if not slightly cross-eyed, look, but didn't straighten up. "_Fuck_! I _really _don't wanna kill the fucking hot chicks!" But the black-haired Noah held out his hand towards the group of three Exorcists, who tensed into battle positions with flares of energy and sparks of fire. Gwen suddenly yelped and put her hands to her chest as the golden Colt .45 she had stashed there popped out and zipped back to its owner's hand. In the process her chest nearly popped out of her shirt, and she held her uniform closed for a moment with one hand as she fixed the wardrobe malfunction.

"Get ready to fly, Tina." Sol hissed, and the brunette nodded with a jingle of her earrings. With a flap and a few feathers falling to the dusty ground, the woman rose a bit higher from the ground. But the strangest thing began to happen: the Noah boys didn't attack or even train their guns on the trio of Exorcists. The dry air of the desert, already musty and hard to breathe, became almost cloying as another ripple seemed to pass across the landscape. This time, though, it wasn't the wind that flattened the grass.

In unison, if not a little bit off key, the two boys began to sing.

"_Long long time ago, there was a cradle,_" they began, deadpan and still off-key. The beat was almost circus-like, the kind you would hear come from an organ grinder's box for his monkey to dance to. "_And in the cradle, there was another cradle, and one cradle has become a twin now. And one of the cradles gets lots in the fog by itself._" The two Noah suddenly moved, and the Exorcists tensed in expectation for a fight. But the guns weren't lowered at the trio, but instead both boys aimed their weapons at the other's head. "_A star is shining brightly at the sacred place, and disappeared_." Suddenly and in unison, they both fired. Instead of blood and ocher and bits and pieces of all sorts caused by bullets or by fire, the two Noah's heads exploded into bursts of multicolored light so bright that the Exorcists had to shield their eyes or look away. The first to look back was Gwen, who quickly pulled both her comrades to look as well.

The bodies of the two Noah had frozen in time it seemed, still halfway reeled backwards with guns falling from slack dead grips. Light still flowed from their heads, but this time it was less and at a more bearable level. With a sigh, Gwen lowered her Rose Chain and straightened up. Squinting through the dust and smoke blown up from the blast, she looked for any sort of sign as to trickery.

"Dis won' end too well, mis amis." She said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose from where they had slid. "Dere's gotta be some kin'a catch. All'a sudden dem boys'll be comin' outta de smoke wit'a fireball ah sum-"

In a sudden movement and a spray of gore, a massive yellow barb burst through Gwen's chest and sent her hurtling backwards. Sol screamed and immediately fired up a gauntlet, punching the yellow strands that were still attached to the barb. It gave, splintering into so many strands that suddenly hung limp like... Like hair. Tina flitted quickly over to Gwen's side, sinking to armored knees next to her friend's head. Her glasses were broken and the Rose Chain was knotted, blood foaming around the wound in a pink froth. One, if not both, of her lungs had been punctured and judging by the massive amount of blood there was no real chance she would survive.

"I should'a seen it coming, Gwen!" Tina said, picking up her friend's head from the ground and brushing hair from the Frenchwoman's face. "I'm sorry! I don't wanna loose you!"

"Don' worry-" she choked out, blood falling from the edges of her lips. "Take de Rose Chain an' help Sol." Tina looked quickly over to where Sol was frantically punching at every barb that came her way out of the dust and fog.

"No! I'm not letting another Exorcist die on me! Not right in front of me!" Gwen smiled and shrugged, then grimaced as the motion hurt her. "How can you be so calm?! I've lost too many people already!" Tina screamed, falling down across her dying comrade and sobbing. The white parts of her single-sleeved uniform began to run through with blood. "You can't leave me!"

"Fly, mon ami." Gwen ordered, before the eyes behind cracked and shattered glasses fogged over and closed ever-so slightly. Slowly, Tina picked herself up from over her friend's still-warm body. She flitted to her feet with a burst of feathers and movement from her winged ankles, and then shot into the sky. Below her, Sol jumped as well.

"Sun Armor, Level Two activation!" The Spanish woman yelled, bringing her gauntlets together. The golden armor spread across the rest of her body in a jointed shell, and with the added weight the woman plummeted back towards the ground to make a crater in the California landscape.

"Anklets." Tina began, looking down at the cruel steel sandals that encased her feet. The wings beat at a steady pace, the metal slowly becoming an angry orangey red that would have burned the Exorcist long before if it hadn't been for the repeated burnings before that had destroyed the nerves in her feet. "I know you don't like me. You only want to use me so as to destroy those Noah." Tina's attention turned suddenly from the sandals to the woman below on the ground whose movements were creating small explosions every time she hit something. The sandals glowed brighter, and the sizzle and smell of burning skin began to reach the Exorcist's nostrils. Long ago it would have made her gag, but she was so frightfully used to it now that she paid it no mind. "Let's blow away the dust and find them."

With a mighty sound and explosion of feathers, the wings at Tina Spark's ankles grew to four times her size and began to beat much harder. The dust on the ground quickly blew away in the maelstrom she created, tendril upon tendril upon tendril of yellow tipped with barbs exposed to the bright and hot sunlight. The bodies of the two Noah boys were gone completely, not a single sign they had been in a fight with Exorcists anywhere. Instead there stood a figure cloaked in red, each and every barbed tendril leading back to its head. Every barbed tendril was the Noah's hair.

"Ugh, you found us." The voice the Noah in red spoke in was deep, possessing an echo. It seemed almost like two people were speaking at once. "At least now Jasdebi can see you too!" The barbed hair jumped up into the air like so many snakes, headed straight for the woman floating in the sky. Without hesitation Tina tucked into a tight spin, the Hermes Anklets lighting up into fire as the excess feathers from the larger wings exploded into a smokescreen of sorts. The tendrils of hair pierced through the screen and headed straight for the Exorcist, only to sizzle and warp into horrible-smelling burnt ashes on the wind. Before Jasdebi could renew its attack, however, the Noah suddenly went flying backwards from the force of the punch delivered to its face. Sol bounced forward, creating a shockwave with her armor that sent rocks and dust and plants flying, and delivered another punch that forced Jasdebi's head into the ground. Again she punched, and then a third and fourth time.

"Sol, move!" Tina yelled, coming out of her spin with her sandals glowing red-hot. With a flap of her smaller and quickly burning wings, the Exorcist began a steep descent towards the body of the Noah that had killed their teammate. Sol jumped just in time to avoid the slices into flesh and coat and hair that the Exorcist created, the sizzle of burning flesh assaulting the Spaish woman's nostrils even from a distance as the Noah screamed in pain and its hair writhed all around on the ground.

A curious feeling began to envelop Sol's arms. A tight sensation, like the squeezing of a python almost. The Sun Armor gave a sudden creak and groan, and the woman looked down at the golden plating of her suit of armor in confusion that quickly turned to shock. Her Hermes Anklets deactivated though still glowing with heat, Tina made her shaky way towards her teammate with freshly-oozing blackened burns all up and down her legs.

"What is it?" She asked, trying to blink tears out of her eyes because of the deep pain that was just beginning to take root in her mind. Not the physical kind, since she had been burned far too many times to feel her newest ones. She had just lost yet another of her closest friends. Since she was young, she had been told to protect the lives of Exorcists. Now she herself was an Exorcist, but she herself couldn't protect them.

"I don't know- agh!" Sol suddenly screamed in pain as one of the armor plates of the Sun Armor suit buckled inward and impacted her forearm in such a way that the crack and snap of bones was audible even through the slowly-growing wildfire that was beginning to gobble up the California desert. "What in the world?!"

What looked like a yellow snake had wound its way around her armor in every crack and across every plate like a web, nearly invisible because of the size of the strands and the color. Another plate buckled inwards, impacting the bruises across the Spanish woman's sides and making her cry out. She fired every joint in her armor, green flames licking across the surface to no avail. Tina scrabbled at the golden surface with her short fingernails, ripping and tearing at the gold-colored web that was beginning to crush yet another of her friends like so many Sardines in a can. Faster, now, more plates of armor began to buckle inwards. One of the leg pieces went with a pop, and then the knee guard of the same piece buckled inward with a crack and a snap and a scream of pain from the woman trapped inside the Innocence.

"I can't deactivate!" The Exorcist screamed, sinking to one knee in an attempt to take the weight off of her probably shattered kneecap. The chest plate of the Sun Armor buckled inward with a crunch of ribs and flesh, and Sol hacked and coughed and screamed. "Tina! Tina, run! Get out of here and go get help! Go find General Ni-" With a massive crunch, the helmet of the Sun Armor suddenly buckled inward. Tina couldn't help but scream as blood began to ooze out of the neck joints of the plated armor. Behind her she could hear a duo-toned laugh, and she stumbled in a turn to look at the Noah that had just murdered both her teammates.

"Isn't that just great?" Jasdebi asked, idly picking at the holes in his coat that were suspended over cauterized pink scars across seamless gray flesh. "No matter what you do, no matter how much of my hair you cut, no matter how far away it gets..." The Noah gestured to the Sun Armor Innocence, which was still buckling inward like it was put under high pressure but accompanied by the cracking and snapping and crunching of bones inside as even more blood oozed out of every joint in every plate. "I can still control it."

"You're a sick son of a bitch." Tina spat, clenching her fists and leveling a glare at the monster that was Jasdebi. "You're no true human, you're a monster! A disgusting sick _monster_!" It seemed like in a flash the tendril of hair was wrapped around the brunette's torso, and with a jingle of her earrings and her anklets she was drug through the air to come face-to-face with the undeniably pretty if not gray and marred by a sneer face of Jasdebi.

"You wound me. You really do." He said, the sneer turning to the same lecherous grin that the black-haired Devit had worn. "Too bad I had to kill the blond. And the Spanish chick. And I still have to kill you." The Noah seemed to ponder a moment, crossing one arm across his chest and rubbing his chin with the other hand. "You're still pretty, though." Tina promptly spat in the Noah's face with enough accuracy and surprise behind her attack that the hair she was wrapped in dropped her on the ground. She scrambled to her feet with curses spewing from her lips at the sorry state her lower legs were becoming, scraped and rolled through the dirt and crusting with bloody and burnt skin and mud.

"There's a special circle in Hell reserved for people like you, you freak!" The brunette yelled at the Noah as she scrambled away from him across the scrubland. Jasdebi yelled in anger and wiped furiously at the spit in his eyes before tendrils of barbed hair shot towards the Exorcist. She yelped and dodged, sustaining a cut across the shoulder bared by her uniform. "You and all of your Noah family!"

Tina Spark had to run. She couldn't stop, she couldn't stay to take the pieces of buckled armor or the knotted and broken chain whip that her dead teammates had possessed, she couldn't do what she had been trained to do from the get-go of her life in the Order. Tina stumbled once, twice, her burnt and bloody legs oozing plasma and dark red that made a trail in the California desert behind her. More of the tendrils of blond hair, wicked sharp barbs at the end seeking fleshy targets, slammed into the ground around her. In a final bid for freedom she jumped as high as she could into the air, and in a burst of heat and the telltale _shink _sound of unfolding steel and the whoosh of feathers unfolding she took to the sky. The Hermes Anklets knew that if they didn't run, they wouldn't have a new host with which they could destroy the current problem. They only had to get away, to fly fast enough and high enough that the barbs and the golden strands couldn't catch them.

Tina Spark couldn't fly high enough.

* * *

**When I first began this, I didn't even know how I was going to go from the beginning to this part. From the very beginning, when I knew that she would have an Innocence that would allow flight, I knew what the last line of the last chapter would be. Eventually I figured I would have a chapter for major points in her life, but that was about it. **

**When I decided on Sol Galen's Innocence, I actually looked through my DC Comics encyclopedia in search of something that was Innocence-y and interesting enough that people wouldn't think it was lame. I eventually found a Justice League member named Aztek, who fights with a set of golden armor with a spiked helmet. The gauntlets and boots were subsequent additions of coolness. While Sol can't actually fly, she can jump to high altitudes and across long distances. If you think of the Hulk in the first Hulk movie, and how he jumped, you have a pretty good idea. **

**Gwen Frere actually came about from a doodle in Math. It was of a woman in a very seventies one-piece disco power suit with cleavage down to her navel and large lapels. The design actually stuck, and eventually my most recent design was formed, which keeps the top and gives her flared bellbottoms and high-heeled ankle boots. her accent was mostly formed from my extreme want to write an accent like Remy LeBeau's from X-Men. I probably failed spectacularly, but I actually don't care now. **

**This chapter was a bit more gruesome than most. But its death, and more importantly the death of three Exorcists. When I gave Sol an all-encompassing suit of armor to fight in as her second activation, I didn't think of crushing her under pressure until I actually started writing it. But Gwen was going to be the first to die from the get-go.  
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**As always, if you read please review. I hope you enjoyed this little ride.  
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